A. Field
The present invention concerns a method for controlling a compressed air installation comprising several compressors.
B. Related Technology
Such compressed air installations comprising several compressors are already known, whereby one or two different types of compressors at the most are combined, which compressors are connected to a single compressed air network with their respective outlets and which are switched on and off in cascade, each at a different switching pressure in order to prevent that several compressors would be switched on and off simultaneously, which would result in enormous fluctuations in the compressed air network.
Such a method for controlling the compressors in a compressed air installation comprising several compressors is disadvantageous in that the overall flow and the pressure in the compressed air network may nevertheless still undergo large fluctuations.
A related disadvantage is that, due to the large pressure fluctuations in the compressed air network, the average pressure is relatively large in relation to the required minimum pressure, which results in a large consumption of energy and in larger leakage losses in the compressed air network.
Another disadvantage of the known method is that the above-mentioned control does not take the optimal working conditions of every separate compressor into account, and that the compressors often operate outside their optimal working domain, where they consume much more energy, comparatively speaking, and wear much faster.
Another disadvantage is that switching the compressors on and off each time is disadvantageous to the power consumption and to the life span of the compressors concerned.